US President Barack Obama has issued a White House invitation to a Muslim schoolboy who was arrested for bringing a homemade clock to school, reports Al Jazeera.
Ninth-grade high school student Ahmed Mohamed from Irving in Texas was arrested on Monday after his teachers reported him to the police for making a clock , which they said resembled a bomb.
"Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like to you like science. It's what makes America great," Obama tweeted.
The arrest prompted outrage on social media with thousands expressing their anger at authorities for arresting a 14-year-old boy over his school project.
Social media users rallied behind the teen using the hashtag#IStandWithAhmed, which has picked up more than 462,000 mentions on Twitter so far, according to analytics site Topsy, and continues to rise rapidly.
The story also ranked highest on the user-generated curation website, Reddit.
Many of the comments cited Mohamed's religious and ethnic background as the probable cause of his arrest, a viewpoint shared by the largest Muslim civil advocacy group in the US.